LCLT seed library
The Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Development (SARD) committee is constructing a seed library. This seed library is committed to providing our community with island appropriate open source seeds, fostering community resilience, self-reliance and a culture of sharing.Magically contained in each seed is the blueprint of life of a plant or tree that grows to offer sustenance to us and other living creatures. Much older than the human race itself, these little blueprints of life are now under threat. Thousands of years of evolution and our ancestors’ labor resulted in a massive diversity of plant varieties adapted to differing localized growing conditions. This diversity is rapidly being lost, with an estimate of approximately 97 percent of U.S. Department of Agriculture lists having disappeared in the last 80 years. Of the remaining seeds in the worlds, 98 percent are now in the hands of just six companies. The seeds being eliminated are the older, open-pollinated, heirloom varieties.With more and more cultivars disappearing it is more important than ever to keep varieties of seeds alive and available for future generations. There is much diversity and strength found in local seed. In light of the demise of so many heirloom seeds, and the conglomeration of seed stock by large agri-chemical companies who have even invented “terminator seeds,” the urgency of this matter became evident. Furthermore, the introduction into American culture of GE (genetically engineered) or GM (genetically modified) plants and foods is seen as a major threat to organic food production.
Through the 2011 annual LCLT Food Charrette, islanders spawned a GMO-Free group. Later LCLT brought in the Percy Schmeiser for its 2011 Harvest Dinner. Percy Schmeiser is a renowned advocate for farmers’ rights to save their own seed. All this has contributed to the vision of a seed library by LCLT for use by the community. LCLT is also sponsoring workshops on seed saving. LCLT has gathered other small equipment that is available to the community in our effort to promote local food security. LCLT received a small flour mill, a hand cranked silage maker, and purchased a small seed cleaner. A LCLT Board member improved a lightweight scythe and made it available for replication. Quality hand sickles were located for purchasing. There is still an effort to secure a small thresher for grain.
LCLT advertised for a grain research intern and connected with O.J. Lougheed, a grain research specialist. Through OJ’s work over a period of a couple of years, LCLT members quickly learned that more farm equipment for grain existed than had previously been known. However, much of the equipment is older, and not necessarily appropriate to the needs or scale of current grain growing on the island. Other issues were brought forward regarding grain, demonstrating the need to address fertility of land, fencing, and accessing of land long term to provide for grain trials. LCLT facilitated establishment of a Grain CSA in the community. The first year the Grain CSA, under the able hands of Horse Drawn Farms and Ken Akopiantz and facilitated by LCLT, had 25 subscribers. The second successful year had 40 subscribers.
- Seed Cleaner Cleaning Wheat from Grain CSA
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- Steam Engine for Thresher
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- CSA Grain Harvest Threshing
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- Grain CSA harvest
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Ona’s Bread: At one of the Annual LCLT Harvest Dinner, this bread won First Prize. Ona Blue has been growing this wheat in her garden for several years and usually harvests about 90 pounds – a years supply of bread for her family of two. She obtained the original Certified Organic seed from Johnny’s Selected Seed. (They no longer carry it.) The variety is ‘Polk’ – a hard red spring wheat – which was bred at and released by the Minnesota Agriculture Experiment Station in 1968. It is a tall non-semi-dwarf wheat and maintains good resistance to the predominate Stripe Rusts west of the Cascades. The varieties from which Polk was bred have both Red Fife (a spring wheat) and Turkey Red (a winter wheat) in their pedigrees. We believe that Polk is one of many older wheats that have a place in the search for local grain production on the Islands.
- Made from homegrown WHEAT, grown, threshed and milled by hand and foot power on Lopez Island plus water and sea salt
Downloads:
Documents are in either Portable Document Format (PDF) or in Rich Text Format (RTF). The later can be opened by MS Word as well as TextEdit on a Mac or various programs on Linux.
- 2010 Grain Project Summary (91 KB Download)
- Written version of an address by O.J. Lougheed given at the Fall Grain Harvest Workshop (2009) hosted by the WSU Extension office in Friday Harbor. (16 KB Download)
- Grain Project Brochure (Fall 2009) in PDF format (2 MB Download)
- 2009 Winter Grain Data Sheet in RTF format (7 KB Download)
- “Finley Wheat, the Rest of the Story” by O.J. Lougheed, from which the text for the “Finley Wheat” insert in the Grain Brochure was taken. (6 KB Download)
Links:
- “Growing Your Own Grains” An essay which is part of an umpublished book-length manuscript titled “Survival Gardening,” by Peter Goodchild.
For more information regarding grain and pulses, you may contact OJ Lougheed atolougheed@gmail.com
